Doug Leone (second row from the bottom, with glasses) stands with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that his Sequoia Capital has backed over the years. Among those pictured include founders of Airbnb, LinkedIn, Tesla and Yahoo. (Photo: Ethan Pines for Forbes)

Sequoia's Doug Leone Joins Ranks Of Midas List Billionaires

It was only a matter of time before Sequoia Capital's Doug Leone became a billionaire. A fixture at the famed venture firm, he has sat across the table from some of Silicon Valley's most influential founders, listening to hundreds of pitches in his 26 years of service. When it's mattered, he and his partners at Sequoia have cut the checks to the likes of
Google,
Yahoo,
LinkedIn and others, building billion-dollar companies in the process.

Now 56, Leone has the bank account to match his CV.

The subject of the latest Forbes' Midas List cover story, the man who ranks sixth among the world's top 100 venture capitalists has scrapped his way to the summit. An Italian immigrant who was called "Pasta" in high school, Leone went from his first jobs cleaning toilets and fixing boats to leading one of Sand Hill Road's most renowned VC firms. But despite his estimated net worth of $1.2 billion, he's still heavily influenced by his gritty upbringing, a perspective that fuels his investment philosophy.

"We want people who come from humble backgrounds and have a need to win," he said in a recent interview with Forbes.

Doug Leone

In the last year, there have been plenty of wins for Sequoia. There was Facebook's unprecedented $19 billion acquisition of messaging company WhatsApp, which will net Sequoia more than $3 billion in Facebook stock and cash. (Forbes estimates the WhatsApp deal will personally bring Leone more than $100 million.) The firm also had a string of successful initial public offerings, among them cybersecurity firm FireEye and cloud telecom company RingCentral, where Leone led Sequoia's investment.

The returns from those successful investments vaulted Sequoia's partners up the 2014 Midas List ranks, and padded their net worths to boot. Because of Sequoia's impressive 12 months, managing partner Leone joins an elite group of nine venture investors with 10-figure fortunes on the list, including colleague Michael Moritz. The 59-year-old Welshman has a net worth Forbes estimate at $2.9 billion, and still remains an investing partner at the firm despite stepping down from administrative duties last year because of health concerns.

Another billionaire who's reduced his role at his venture firm is Jim Breyer. The Accel partner announced earlier this month that he'd be cutting back his time at Accel to focus on personal investments. Last year's highest-ranked Midas Lister, he stepped down from Facebook's board in 2013. Most of his $2 billion fortune lies in stock he owns in the social network.

“As a partner I am highly supportive of the next generation of leaders at Accel and plan to be actively involved with the new funds while also increasing my independent investment activity through my family office Breyer Capital,” he said earlier this month after Accel raised two new funds totaling more than $1 billion.

Three other Midas Listers are billionaires not only due to their investing, but also because of their entrepreneurial endeavors. Peter Thiel made a name for himself initially by cofounding PayPal. He also helped start big data firm Palantir shortly after becoming the first institutional investor in Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook in late 2004. Today, as Palantir's chairman and largest individual investor, he holds onto an estimated 12% stake in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that is worth more than $1 billion.

Greylock Partners' Aneel Bhusri and Reid Hoffman can also attribute most of their fortunes to the companies they cofounded. Bhusri, a new member of Forbes' Billionaires List in 2014, serves as co-CEO and chairman of enterprise software firm
Workday, whose shares are up more than 50% in the last 12 months. Hoffman still chairs LinkedIn and maintains the title as the world's richest venture capitalist with a net worth Forbes estimates at $3.5 billion.

The only non-American among the richest Midas Listers is Russian Yuri Milner, who's recently moved his firm's head offices to Hong Kong to be closer to his Chinese investments. The final two billionaires in the ranks of the top 100 VCs are among the most seasoned investors: John Doerr and Vinod Khosla.

I'm a San Francisco-based reporter covering the agitators in technology and e-commerce. I started at Forbes as a member of the wealth team, putting together the magazine's well-known World Billionaires and Forbes 400 lists. I've worked at a number of publications including T...